Kyiv, Aug 22: Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least seven people in Ukraine, officials said Saturday, while a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Krasnodar region killed three people there.
The attacks came a day after a Russian strike on a Ukrainian shopping centre killed at least 16 people and wounded some 130.
Moscow’s forces have recently intensified their ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, exploiting Ukraine’s chronic shortage of US-made Patriot air defence interceptors, the sole weapon in its arsenal able to shoot down the missiles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that one person was killed and another wounded in the latest attacks when ballistic missiles hit railway infrastructure in the capital, Kyiv, overnight.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said that its forces had hit a locomotive depot.
In a separate attack, local authorities said two people were killed Saturday afternoon in a Russian ballistic missile strike on the Kyiv region, which surrounds the capital.
Russian drone strikes also killed one person overnight in the Zaporizhzhia region, local officials said Saturday, and a daytime attack killed three others and wounded 15. Zelenskyy said that three people were also wounded in an attack on a minibus in the regional capital, also called Zaporizhzhia.
In Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, authorities said that three people, including two children, were killed and two adults were wounded in a Ukrainian drone strike.
A day on from a deadly attack on a shopping centre
The latest attacks came a day after Russian drones struck a shopping centre in the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine.
Dnipropetrovsk regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said in the early hours of Saturday that the death toll had risen to 16. Later on Saturday, he said four people remain missing after the attack, which wounded a further 130.
Kryvyi Rih is the hometown of Zelenskyy, who described the attack as a double-tap strike, in which an initial wave of drones hit the area followed by a second wave as rescue workers responded. The Ukrainian leader said the fire, which spread across 9,000 square metres (around 97,000 square feet), had been extinguished and rescue efforts were underway.
Kryvyi Rih has been hit multiple times during the 4½-year all-out war between Russia and Ukraine, with one of the deadliest occurring in April 2025, when 20 people were killed, including nine children.
Large-scale Russian strikes have become a regular occurrence this summer, with Friday’s attacks landing just 24 hours after Russia pounded Kyiv with scores of missiles and drones in a nighttime assault that killed 16 people. The United Nations said last week that Kyiv was one of the hardest-hit cities in July, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 wounded.
Ukraine pounds Russia with long-range strikes
At the same time, Ukraine has shifted the war onto Russian soil through long-range drone strikes on oil facilities that have caused fuel shortages across Russia. It also has unsettled the Russian public by striking warehouses of Wildberries, the country’s biggest online retailer.
The Russian online news outlet Astra reported Saturday that a Ukrainian drone set ablaze an oil refinery in the Samara region. Local officials said that damage was recorded at an unidentified “industrial facility” and a logistics centre for Ozon, a competitor to Wildberries.
Zelenskyy said Saturday Ukrainian forces struck the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Samara, noting it is some 620 miles (1,000 kilometres) from the front line. (AP)
